


love sticks, sweat drips

by Yellow_Bird_On_Richland



Category: You (TV 2018)
Genre: Character Study: Love Quinn, F/M, Love Actually Rewrite, Love is off her rocker, S2E10 Rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27489556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yellow_Bird_On_Richland/pseuds/Yellow_Bird_On_Richland
Summary: Joe really should be more grateful, Love thinks, that she’s so careful with knives.Contains major S2 spoilers.
Relationships: Joe Goldberg/Love Quinn
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	love sticks, sweat drips

**Author's Note:**

  * For [voltemand](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voltemand/gifts).



> Response to the Florence and the Machine-inspired prompt “kiss with a fist.” Crack-ish, but writing from Love Quinn’s perversely twisted POV was a hoot, in all honesty. Also, Victoria Pedretti’s range? Unmatched. Absolutely stupid how good she is as an actress.

Love's aware that sharing this little fact will make her sound crazy-or crazi _er_. Okay, okay, she'll concede that point. She's a gracious sport, a lesson well-learned from tennis. After all, Forty always called her clear winners out. He was just wired to cheat. In tennis, on girlfriends, at taxes, everything.

She'll mourn him later, of course-he was her brother, after all. She's not a monster, although Joe seems to believe that's up for discussion.

"All I'm doing is speaking ugly truths," Love pouts. And Joe knows it, even if his face turns over in revulsion as the potential mother of his child murmurs, "The act of murder itself-that's not the hard part. Not when you've got the proper tools and genuine, bone-deep motivation."

Joe backs away from her, his eyes darting around like he's trapped even though she's the one at ease in his glass cage, with a half-dessicated corpse next to her on the floor. She sighs.

" _If he can't appreciate my devotion now,"_ Love laments, _"what kind of father will he make for our child? What kind of example will he set?"_

She needs to test him, push him.

"All it takes is practice," she smiles.

"P-practice?" Joe stammers.

"Of course. It's not so different from cooking," she responds, feeling her grin ratchet up a bit further. "You've done it, too, Joe, between Peach and Benji and Beck. You've honed your strengths and weaknesses. What methods you're comfortable with, which ones you'd rather avoid."

Love mentally runs with the metaphor, pictures herself sauteing red onions for the hundred and twenty eighth time, sweating them down til they're translucent for fajitas. Or she could be slicing a strip steak against the grain, with an easy, graceful sawing action and consistent pressure. Maybe even spatchcocking a turkey for Thanksgiving, registering a savage pleasure that chills the back of her neck, nearly inside her first vertebrae, at the visceral, onomatopoeic _snap_ as she cracks the backbone and removes it from the bird.

As she considers Candace's lifeless body, she feels like she's thirteen again, slicing that harlot Sofia's neck open. The only good that ever came from that whore's endless sunbathing-endless tempting of the once-innocent Forty, more like-was the heat baking her skin, enabling Love to sever it like she was cutting through room temperature Kerrygold butter, about to be slathered all over a Hawaiian roll (hey, Ina Garten has it right: sometimes, store bought is just as good as homemade).

And, really, her past self's example demonstrates the validity of her analysis, would enable her to score a point off Joe, were they two high school or college Elocution students debating the most challenging part of committing murder. Because snuffing Sofia's life out took roughly eight seconds. Maybe fourteen, if you included checking for a pulse. But scrubbing the blood out of the white Adirondack chairs? Figuring out how to frame Forty for the crime? Christ, handling those administrative details took her a good hour, at least.

And Delilah...she should've realized the blood spray would splatter the glass. Rookie mistake. But she's covered for it, hasn't she? After all, a woman committing suicide isn't going to care about making a mess, right?

"How...why?" Joe asks, his voice shattered.

Love barely resists the ugly urge to sneer at him. _"Mister mass murderer and body hider is getting queasy now? And it's only because I'm not some miss perfectly refined pixie dreamgirl. No, I'm better. After all, look at what I've done for him. For us. For our family. For love."_

She nearly giggles at the little joke-she's always possessed a keen instinct for self-preservation, raised amongst other fucked-up Quinns-then considers his question from another angle. A more technical one.

Florence Welch once sang that a kick in the teeth is good for some, that a kiss with a fist is better than none. Love contemplates the lyrics from a more personal angle, and realizes that a kiss with a fist is perfectly fine.

But a kiss from _her_ fist? With a knife in her grip?

Love grins despite herself because, yeah, _that's_ her favorite kind of smooch to deliver.


End file.
